How I Came to Live in Nahant
A Memories Project submission by Molly Conlin
In April 1973, Dave accepted a job offer in Boston. We both grew up in western New York and had been living in the Washington D.C. area for several years while Dave attended law school. He was clerking for Judge Phillip Baldwin at what at the time was the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals.
Neither one of us was familiar with New England, except for our brief honeymoon in Kennebunkport, Maine in 1969, and my sis weeks in Newport, Ri in 1966 at boot camp for Navy nurses.
As we had some time before the new job actually started, we drove up to Boston for four days to look for a house to rent. Then our plan was to take a cross country trek before we had to settle in. We took a room at a hotel in Newton and looked around at rentals in the Boston suburbs. After two days and quite a few houses, we were not inspired. It all looked very much like the suburbs in which we were renting in the D.C. area. We called a real estate agent closer to the ocean. We looked at several houses in the Swampscott and Marblehead neighborhoods. Still no inspiration.
As we left Swampscott to head back to Newton, discouraged because we were running out of time, our two-year-old son, Patrick, was restless in the back seat. We looked at the map of the Northshore and just in front of our location was an area that looked like it might be a park. It had a road connecting it with the mainland. I doubt at that time that I knew what a ‘causeway’ was. We turned the car onto it.
We drove along the lower part of Nahant Road and our interest was tweaked. There were houses on this ‘island thing’! When we got to the top of the hill just past a church, on the left was an open space with a pickup softball game. Women were playing!!
I had played softball in the summers as a youth. My first job was for the Lockport, New York Parks Department coaching girl’s youth softball. At this point, I turned to Dave and said, “I don’t know where you want to live, but I’m going to live here!” The next day, we called the real estate agent and had her show us houses for sale in Nahant. The second house we looked at was 11 Winter Street, Fred and Wilma Nichol’s house. “Roland’s Barn”. When I looked out the living room window, Dave made me go outside for a walk. He was afraid all my oohing and aahing would affect negotiations.
We put in an offer the next day after Dave called Judge Baldwin and told him about the house we had seen. The Judge said, “Dave, if you don’t buy that house, I’m going to buy it!” I’ve looked longer for a pair of new shoes to buy. Since the day we moved to Nahant, on July 3, 1973, Dave and I agree that it was a good move!
Color Photo: It’s a bit blurry, but I am in the back row, (I am 4th from the left)
Black and White Photo: My first team after the pick-up game was organized into the Nahant Woman’s Softball League. The ‘Tides’ team eventually became the ‘Islanders’ and we won the championship in 1986. (I am in the middle row, far right).